


Unsaid Things

by punkbean



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Gen, Hope that's okay, actual sibling bonding? what? huh?, but i still wish they'd address it in canon, suicide attempt (mentioned), talking about things?, this is entirely cathartic and self indulgent, tommy is only talked about but he's talked about enough that it felt valid to include him in a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 03:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkbean/pseuds/punkbean
Summary: Wanda and Pietro have a long overdue conversation about past events.(Just in case you didn't see the tag, referenced suicide attempt.)





	Unsaid Things

"…I think we both knew he was wrong," Wanda said, laughing at the end of the story she was telling. Then she shifted in her seat, and her brow began to furrow in a way that Pietro was all too familiar with.

That was the 'it's time for a serious conversation' look. 

He wanted to run as soon as he saw her face move in that general direction, but he forced himself to stay put, at least for the moment. He would hear her out, and if the conversation was an awful one, he would make a bid for freedom. At least that might put it off for a little while. 

"So," she said after what felt like hours to Pietro. He felt like he had scanned through every single topic it could be: his relationship status ( _single_ ), his sexuality ( _fluid_ ), Luna ( _that would be fine, actually_ ), their father ( _don't start_ ). Hundreds more options, but he still wasn't prepared for what came out of her mouth next. 

"We need to talk about the time you tried to commit suicide, Pietro," she said. Her voice was gentle, but the words went through Pietro like icicles. 

How had she found out about it? In fact, he was fairly sure she knew about it before. He just assumed she didn't want to talk about it. Not in a malicious way, or a dismissive way; just in the way that it was a difficult time for all of them, and he assumed it would just be a bygone. So why did she want to talk about it now? And what the hell was he supposed to say? 

He realised it had been far too long since he'd said anything. For most people, there would have been barely a pause. Maybe the smallest of hesitations, but nothing worth thinking about. It had been an age for Pietro, though, and he knew fine well that Wanda knew him well enough that she would notice. If she was in this kind of mood, she was likely to quiz him about that, too. 

"What?" was the eloquent response he managed. 

"Don't play dumb with me, _fratior_. After M-Day," Wanda said, drumming against his knee with her fingertips.

"I'm not your _fratior_ ," Pietro said after a moment's consideration. 

"Yes you are. You were born thirty seconds after me, it makes you younger," Wanda said, looking only slightly unbearably smug. Her face hardened almost immediately, though. "But don't try to change the subject. We need to talk about this."

Pietro really, desperately wanted to run. He'd leave the apartment, and it would knock some stuff over and irritate Wanda, but he could live with that. He'd rather be running through Death Valley than having this conversation. ( _But maybe that was an inappropriate metaphor, considering the situation_ ).

"Why now? I'm over it. It was years ago," Pietro said. Usually Wanda's fingers drumming on his knee would ground him. Make his head stop spinning, and stop so many thoughts from crowding him at once. Now, though, it felt like his heart was beating faster to try and keep pace with the erratic rhythm she was creating. 

"So we can talk about it, if you're over it. I want to hear what happened. Not from Peter, not from Crystal, but from you," Wanda said. She finally stopped drumming on his knee and lay her hand there instead, her thumb occasionally flicking out to rub against the side of his knee. At least that was better than the drumming. 

Pietro shifted in his seat, however, turning to face her apartment at large. If she looked at his face head-on, she'd be able to read him like a book. He didn't need that right now. "You talked to Crystal about it?" he asked, unable to stop himself from quirking an eyebrow. 

"Don't make that face, Pietro. Yes, I talked to Crystal about it," Wanda said. 

He could feel her eyes burning into the side of his face. Rather than turn away even more, he fixed his eyes on a photo on the other side of the room. Himself, Wanda, Lorna, Luna, Tommy, and Billy. He didn't enjoy getting sentimental, but that had been one of the best days of his life. Yes, he'd saved the world on more than one occasion, and he'd been to space and seen incredible things, but the best day of his life had been a picnic in Central Park with his sisters, daughter, and nephews. 

He found himself feeling nostalgic about 'those times', despite 'those times' being very much (mostly, when Luna could visit) available to him now. It didn't feel that way, though, since Wanda was insistent on him thinking about these years-old feelings. Feelings that didn't exist anymore. 

"I don't really know what you want me to say. I felt bad, I wanted everything to stop, I tried to make that happen," Pietro said quickly. He knew he was snapping, and he knew he shouldn't, but if Wanda was going to bring up something like this she should expect it. 

"Do you still feel like that?" Wanda asked after a tense silence. Her voice was cotton-soft, in stark contrast to Pietro's harshness. 

"What? No," Pietro said too quickly. Alarm bells were ringing in his head.

He knew it wasn't healthy, but he coped with things by looking after people. When he felt bad, he made sure Wanda was okay. If Wanda was okay, he'd move onto Lorna or Luna or anyone else around him that he cared about. People often said he was cold-hearted, and that hurt more than he cared to admit – he liked nothing more than making his loved ones happy, and even if he wasn't so good at expressing affection sometimes, he hoped that would be obvious.  

Apparently it wasn't, though. And he'd been told hundreds of times that vulnerability was a two-way thing, and that to have meaningful relationships he would need to be vulnerable in front of others, too. He knew, and he tried, and with Wanda it was easier than with anybody else because they understood each other better than anybody else ever could, but it still wasn't easy. 

When other people tried to take care of him, it felt like everything was out of balance. 

"It's fine," he said. A moment later, he realised that Wanda hadn't said anything else. 

She didn't look like she was planning on saying anything else anytime soon. She was making the same face she made at Tommy when she tried to encourage him to be more open. From an outside perspective, it was sweet. Especially when it worked and Tommy admitted something all in a rush, looking like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. 

Logically, Pietro knew that it was proof of its effectiveness, but he still didn't really want to talk about it properly. He huffed a sigh and leaned back, sinking into the sofa cushions and closing his eyes. 

"I don't really want to kill myself anymore," he said, forcing himself to speak slowly enough to be understood. He made no such effort when he continued, though. "ButIdostillfeelbadalmostallthetimeandit'salmostworsenowbecauseIhavenoreasontofeelsobadandthatmeansitwillnevergoaway."

The sentence was over in what was probably somewhere between two and three seconds. He opened his eyes when Wanda started drumming on his knee again. He didn't know if she had understood what he said, but as much as he hated to admit it, it felt good to have said it out loud. 

"Have you taken antidepressants?" Wanda asked after a short while. 

"Did you hear what I said?" Pietro asked, finally turning back to look at her face. 

"You think I can't understand you when you talk fast, Pietro?" she asked, raising her eyebrows before laughing and shuffling closer to him on the sofa, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. "I've been with you my whole life, and Tommy's always here talking my ear off at a thousand miles an hour. I've adapted," she said. 

Pietro thought about that for a while. It made sense. Even if she couldn't understand the words themselves, Wanda had always understood him on a deeper level than words. He always thought that if he wasn't a twin, he would think all of the twin connection stuff was bullshit, but he was a twin, so he knew just how important it was. 

"I tried taking antidepressants. But you know medications and my body don't go so well together," he said, slithering down until he could rest his head against her shoulder. It took some more shuffling to get comfortable – her curly hair kept getting in his face and making him want to sneeze, but he managed to tuck it away at least for the time being. 

Wanda kept still while he made himself comfortable, but as soon as he was situated she started playing with his hair. It was getting longer than he usually kept it, and it was curlier than he preferred, but of course Wanda liked it that way. "Your hair is so lovely when it gets to this length," she said, as if she could read his mind. "Have you tried talking to one of our friends about it? They worked on those anaesthetics, they might be able to figure out antidepressants." 

Pietro scrunched up his nose. "It's too curly," he said, elbowing her gently in the side. "I think I'd prefer them not to know. Anaesthetics is one thing, that's part of the job, but antidepressants feels too personal."

"You want to talk to me about curls, Pietro?" Wanda asked, shaking her head just enough so that a couple of curly locks of hair fell over Pietro's face again. "Antidepressants are no less part of the job than anaesthetics, though. I know it's more personal, but having mental health issues in our line of work isn't unusual, is it? Some of the things we have to see…" 

She trailed off, and though Pietro couldn't see her face, he knew exactly what expression she'd be making. He was sure he was making the exact same one. And it was an expression he'd seen on far too many of their colleagues' faces over the years. 

"It's not like I always feel bad," Pietro said after a too-long pause. 

Wanda seemed glad for the distraction from wherever her mind had gone. "Really?" 

Pietro hummed. As much as he hated saying things like this, he knew it would make Wanda better. And maybe having it out in the open would make him feel less cagey and weird about it. "It's easier when I'm around you or Lorna. And when Luna comes to see me, or the twins," he said, his eyes automatically travelling back to the photo of that day in Central Park. 

If he had to guess, he would say that Wanda was looking at the same thing. "That's sweet. It makes me feel better, too," she said, tugging affectionately at his hair. "I know it's maybe not the future we imagined for ourselves when we were younger, but it's not so bad, is it?" 

Pietro hummed. "I don't know. I'm still quite sad that I never got to be an acrobat."

Wanda snorted. "And I'm sad that I didn't get to be an actress! But I mean our families. I don't think you imagined you'd be divorced when you were younger." 

"Thanks," Pietro grumbled, elbowing Wanda again. She elbowed him right back. "Does anyone imagine that they'll be divorced when they're younger? And even if the marriage was terrible, I got Luna out of it. So that was worth it." 

"That's true. I don't think I had the imagination as a child to dream up anything that happened with me and Vision – don't start, Pietro – and everything with the twins," Wanda said with a sigh. 

Pietro's life hadn't been a walk in the park, but Wanda's really was a special kind of confusing. He still got a headache when he thought too hard about the reincarnation thing. Luna had asked him about it one day, reminding him that she had been born before them, and Pietro had eventually had to go and lie down after thinking about it so much. He understood his sister more than anyone else, but the magic was still a mystery to him. 

"At least you got them back," Pietro said, now looking at a photo on the coffee table. It was from one of the first 'recon missions', as Tommy liked to call them. From the time when it was all new and a bit scary but Wanda just wanted some kind of relationship with her reincarnated spirit sons. 

She hadn't been pushy about it, and both twins had been receptive, but she and Tommy had ended up closer than anticipated. She was close with Billy, too – they bonded over the shared powers, and met regularly for tea and chats, but those were usually scheduled in advance. Tommy was at the point where he could, and would, drop by her apartment without warning, a bag of food from halfway across the world clutched to his chest. 

At first, Pietro had been a bit confused about the different levels of closeness. It all made sense when he learned about their families, though. Billy had a loving family he'd grown up with. They lived fairly close to Wanda, about a 20-minute ride away on the subway. Tommy, however, had nobody. Now, he affectionately said that he'd been in the market for new parents, and Wanda had fitted the bill perfectly. 

He and Tommy were so similar, too. Of course, there were the physical things – most notably the white hair – but there was also the reluctance to trust, and the reluctance to talk about feelings. Maybe that was part of the reason Wanda had been able to get through to him so quickly. 

At first, having a nephew had been a bit overwhelming. He wasn't used to people being at his speed. He would be running quite happily crossing the Atlantic to go and get fish and chips for Luna, when suddenly there was someone running right next to him, chatting as if they were jogging in the park instead of running across the ocean at supersonic speeds. 

It had been strange and foreign to him, but soon he got used to it. Tommy started joining missions with the Avengers. When other members of the team said something stupid, he and Tommy could exchange eye rolls faster than the others could see. If he wanted to discuss new strategies, he didn't have to slow down and spell it out at a snail's pace for the others – he could try it on Tommy first, who would make his own contributions first, then they could share with the rest of the team. 

And they'd still be able to give each other looks when it took what felt like years to explain a fairly simple concept. 

Plus, it was nice to have someone to travel with that he didn't have to carry or wait for. It was becoming a regular thing for Tommy to text him some coordinates, or a random street name, and Pietro would run and meet him there and they would try a new restaurant or dumb tourist attraction. 

He had brought Luna along to some of those meetings, too. Those were some of the other happiest days of his life. He made a quick mental note to print some of the photos from those trips to hang in his own apartment. 

"I still wish I had gotten a chance to raise them," Wanda said.

Their thoughts had been in very different places, but Pietro was quick to snap to her line of thinking. "You know you're more of a parent to Tommy than Frank and Mary ever were, don't you?" 

Wanda nodded. "I know. And I'm glad I get the chance to be his mother now, and I'm so proud of the man he's become. For selfish reasons, I wish I had been able to cuddle him and go through all the milestones with him. But for less selfish reasons, I wish I had been his mom so he didn't have to go through all of…that."

That was another thing Pietro and Tommy had in common. They both had kind of terrible childhoods, but they were both doing their best to overcome it and be good men. Tommy was doing a considerably better job than Pietro ever had, though, and for that he was proud. 

"I think we've done okay," Pietro said, glancing up at Wanda's face. 

The angle was a bit awkward, but Wanda smiled down at him, patting his cheek. "Better than okay," she agreed. 

Maybe being taken care of wasn't so bad after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> this turned into a bit of a character study, but i wanted to get my thoughts out onto a page. one day i might write a fic without getting wildly off track and rambling about whatever. thank you for reading!


End file.
